Barbara Elovic: Hillary Isn’t My Candidate

Hillary Clinton is running unopposed for the Democratic nomination, a development which many progressives are cheering. Believe me, I would love to see a female president, but Clinton’s history raises serious questions about her ethics and her commitment to progressive values.

She’s opened her campaign headquarters in a building owned by Bruce Ratner, one of Brooklyn’s least popular real-estate developers. He evicted hundreds of people from affordable housing so that he could build an indoor stadium for the Brooklyn Nets, a basketball team in which he owns an interest. Were Clinton less tone deaf to people’s feelings she would have selected another site.

She’s been anointed by the press, not the people, as the inevitable candidate, which seems to be intimidating more progressive candidates from attempting to challenge her. She’s also mimicking some of Elizabeth Warren’s populist language with the difference being that I have all confidence that Elizabeth Warren means what she says. Hillary, not so much. I think this is a real shame. More progressive candidates should be on the ballot in the primaries so voters have an actual choice.

It’s all well and good for Clinton to come out in support of a constitutional amendment opposing the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision that allows for unlimited campaign contributions. This costs her nothing. Most of her campaign war chest is full of money from Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest financial establishments in the world as well as a Wall Street powerhouse. Clearly, Hillary is not a populist. An amendment would have to work its way through state legislatures across the country and gain approval before becoming law. This process takes years. Meanwhile Hillary can literally take the money and run.

When Ms. Clinton briefly served as a New York senator, she voted to support the Bush-Cheney regime’s invasion of Iraq. When I wrote to her expressing my disappointment with her vote, I received the one and only letter written in Orwell-Speak ever addressed to me. Something about making war being better than not making war so soon after the collapse of the World Trade Towers, lest our enemies think we are weak. The fact that Iraq had nothing to do with the attack was totally irrelevant to her.

She refused to commit to opposing the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, which may be great for international corporations, but will no doubt benefit American workers about as much as NAFTA, which was passed by her husband and has proven a disaster for American labor.

Hillary Clinton conducts politics by weather vane. She knows a lot of Americans are hurting economically. Many people are unemployed who may never get a chance to go back to work in their field of choice or get another job at all. So she talks the progressive talk hoping it will sound good to people who are losing their jobs and their homes and falling fast out of the middle class. But her record does not prove a genuine commitment to such rhetoric.

When Bill Clinton ran for president he promised that a vote for him ensured that two experienced leaders would be in the White House at the same time. We the people would be getting, “two for the price of one.” What a bargain! When he assumed office, he followed up on his sales pitch quickly when he appointed Hillary to direct the effort to reform the health-care system. Hillary did not go about this endeavor with the humility necessary to build consensus. She consulted with almost no one. She was the expert. She didn’t bother to contact the AMA (American Medical Association) or any other doctor’s group. Her hubris annoyed a lot of people. It wasn’t only the advertising blitz launched by the health insurance lobby that turned a lot of people off. You probably remember the Republican ads featuring the fictitious Louise and her husband hunched over their kitchen table worrying about how they were going to pay their higher priced premiums. These were effective ads whether or not there was any truth to them. Hillary’s “I know better than you” stance and the baroquely complicated final proposal she devised played equal parts in its undoing.

When she ran for president in 2008 the only speech she gave that clearly identified Hillary with the feminist cause was her concession speech. During the campaign she was tossing back beers with the rest of the boys.

And using a private server for her e-mails while she served as Secretary of State just smells wrong to me. It lends itself naturally to the conclusion that she had something to hide. I’m not enamored of many American politicians today, but the Clintons seem to enjoy secrecy.

—

copyright 2015 Barbara Elovic